For the 2024-25 academic year, the Aldersley High School chose to become a “Traiblazer” for the Level 2 Qualification in Leadership Skills, which sits underneath the Environment Leaders Programme. Offering the Level 2 qualification opens the programme to learners aged 11 and up, while the school also offers the Level 3 Qualification in Leading a Project for Positive Change for learners aged 16 and up.
Providing young people with the skills to make a difference
Located in Wolverhampton, West Midlands, the school decided to work with the Leadership Skills Foundation to offer the Level 2 Qualification as a way of empowering students to make a difference in their surroundings. Leah McClure, Director of Science at Aldersley High, explains: “We chose to deliver the programme as a way of explicitly teaching the students how to bring about positive change.
“School curriculums have yet to catch up with the climate crisis and we see how the students are suffering from ecoanxiety. The Environment Leaders Programme equips them with the skills to effect positive change and it ensures they understand that one person can make a difference, but that real change takes teamwork.
“The students gain a range of leadership skills that there just isn’t time for in the main curriculum. The skills the learners gain are wide-reaching, transferrable and essential skills which they will use for the rest of their lives.”
A real sense of independence
The Level 2 Qualification in Leadership Skills sees learners developing their skills – teamwork, communication, self-belief, self-management problem solving – using a series of editable classroom resources and recoding their progress via Learner Evidence Records.
Leah explains the impact this has on the students: “The Level 2 Qualification encourages the students to explore their own interests in terms of positively impacting the natural world and learn new things within a clear delivery framework, competing activities that directly benefit the community we live in and its environment.
“As an inspiration to our Level 2 students, the Level 3 learners are already working on projects ranging from Hedgehog houses, working with local primary schools to build and maintain them, to launching a campaign in school raising awareness of microplastics and encouraging more recycling.
“Meanwhile our Level 2 learners are already developing their activity ideas, including tackling fast fashion and encouraging people to grow their own vegetables.
“The programme gives learners a real sense of independence as learning involves guidance rather than direction compared to most curricular courses, allowing students an element of decision making and ownership for their actions.
“By putting their projects and activities into action, the students have had a really positive effect on the school and wider community through a variety of positive environmental benefits such as planting trees and wildflowers, making bug boxes and the collecting and recycling of plastic, batteries and crisp packets.
“These courses show students how to effect positive change and equip them with the skills to do so, as well as encouraging them to pass this learning on and empower the next generation.
“The ability to gain an extra qualification, the positive change they make with their project and the transferable life skills taught are a powerful trinity of self-empowerment for the students.”
The waiting list to deliver the Level 2 Qualification under the Environment Leadership Programme from August 2025 is now open. Learn more about the programme and its potential to empower young people to take positive social action for the natural world here.